Chairman: Fort Smith Med School Would Support Itself After Three Years

Sunday

Feb 23, 2014 at 9:27 AM

It would take three years for a proposed medical school in the Fort Smith region to support itself financially, the Fort Smith Regional Healthcare Foundation’s board chairman said Friday.

It would take three years for a proposed medical school in the Fort Smith region to support itself financially, the Fort Smith Regional Healthcare Foundation’s board chairman said Friday.

The foundation unveiled plans earlier in the week for what it calls the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine on 200 acres of donated land that straddles both Fort Smith and Barling at Chaffee Crossing.

The seed money is a byproduct of the 2009 sale of Sparks Health System to Health Management Associates for $138 million, according to the foundation, which was created to take care of the sale’s loose ends.

"It was formed on Dec. 1, 2009, when Sparks Heath System sold its assets," said Tom Webb, executive director of the Fort Smith Regional Healthcare Foundation. "For the last 4 1/2 years, we’ve gone through the process of unwinding that hospital sale. We accumulated a substantial amount of funds."

Parker said the $58 million will cover an anticipated loss of revenue during the college’s first three years. After that, he said, enough students should be enrolled at a rate of $45,000 in tuition annually to support the college.

The proposed college will enroll 150 students per year for a total of 600 students, Parker said. He added that current plans place the first crop of students in class by August 2017.

The initial college building is estimated to cost $15 million, but long-range plans include what Parker described as "a medical university" with potentially a dental school, physician’s assistant school and physical therapy schools. He added that it’s possible the foundation may also one day consider housing to accommodate students, but it likely would not include dormitories because many of the future students are anticipated to be married or have families.

For more than a year, the foundation has been studying the feasibility of establishing an osteopathic medical school in the region.

"This involved the study of medically underserved areas in Arkansas and Oklahoma," Parker said. "What we discovered was that while Arkansas and Oklahoma are right at the bottom of physician accessibility in the United States … both the western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma regions are the most underserved areas."

In early September, Arkansas State University hired a health care and economic development consulting firm to study the feasibility of developing an osteopathic medical school in Jonesboro

"A DO school could be totally transformative to the state of Arkansas because nobody disputes the need for primary health care is great," Jason Penry, ASU vice chancellor for university advancement, said at the time.

Results of the study, according to ASU, indicate an osteopathic medical school in Jonesboro "would help meet the demand for more primary care physicians in the Delta" and "have an initial $70 million economic impact" on northeast Arkansas.

In a news release from ASU, Chancellor Tim Hudson stated that a proposal based on the study’s findings is expected on the ASU Board of Trustees Feb. 28 meeting agenda.

Frazier Edwards, executive director of the Arkansas Osteopathic Medical Association, said Friday the proposed Fort Smith school is the only project his association is supporting.

Keeping the school under the umbrella of private funding, he added, will avoid competition for state funding with other public medical colleges like the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

At Osteopathic.org, the American Osteopathic Association’s website, the Fort Smith Regional Healthcare Foundation is listed as the only group in Arkansas currently applying for osteopathic college accreditation.

Mercy Health System, Sparks, Cooper Clinic, the Choctaw Nation Health Services Authority and Community Health Centers of Arkansas have indicated they will assist with clinical rotations, according to Parker.

"The response we received from the community … was overwhelmingly favorable," he said.

All eight board members of the Fort Smith Regional Healthcare Foundation are also on the 12-member Degen Foundation, a group long associated with Sparks Health System that awards $500,000 in grants and scholarships annually.

"This has been a long process, with a lot of hours by a lot of people looking at this," Parker said. "The board is a really great group who know academia inside and out."

According to the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, there are 30 osteopathic medical schools in the United States, the nearest being Oklahoma State University Center for Health Services in Tulsa, William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Hattiesburg, Miss., Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences in Kansas City, Mo., and University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth. About 70,000 doctors of osteopathy practice nationwide.

The AACOM estimates the gap between physician supply and demand will range from 50,000 to more than 100,000 by the year 2020.

According to the American Osteopathic Association, DOs are fully trained physicians licensed by state medical boards to prescribe medication, perform surgery and practice in all recognized medical specialties. Osteopathic training includes an emphasis on "the body as an integrated whole" and the connectedness of the muscular, skeletal and nervous systems, the AOA states on its website.

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